If Trump Cares About Jobs, Why Isn’t He Talking More About Drywall Installers?

President Donald Trump during a news conference in the Rose Garden at the White House on Friday in Washington.

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On Monday, President Donald Trump tweeted a story touting the “first new coal mine of the Trump era” opening in Pennsylvania. On last week’s Political Gabfest, David Plotz challenged the Trump administration’s coal obsession by comparing how many people that industry employs versus other professions. The lightly edited transcript is reprinted below.

We’ve heard a lot about coal miners recently. When we pulled out of the Paris accord, Donald Trump and his administration cited, of course, the coal industry and protecting America coal jobs during the campaign.

The embattled and put-upon coal miner was a huge subject of discussion. We’ve heard a lot about coal plants. The Environmental Protection Agency administrator said on ABC that 50,000 coal jobs had been created in the last quarter, which turns out to be a lie. In fact, there were 400 coal jobs created in the last quarter, and the entire coal industry—entire coal industry—is 51,000 people working in it, of whom, according to the best estimates, only about 15,000 are actually miners.